


Injuries Sustained

by NephilimEQ



Series: 30 Days of OTP Prompts [3]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, John Whump, M/M, Male Friendship, Patching Each Other Up, Rodney Whump, Saving Each Other, hint of something more, otp prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 20:21:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13418934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NephilimEQ/pseuds/NephilimEQ
Summary: “Oh, shut up, you big baby, it’s not that deep. You just need a couple of stitches. Give me a minute, and I’ll have you patched up, okay?” As Rodney dug through the supplies, John gave him a wary look, and the younger man saw it, rolled his eyes a second time, and said, “I know how to do stitches, Sheppard. Jennifer forced me to take basic training for these types of things, just in case anything like this happened while off-world. Looks like it’s gonna come in handy; what a surprise,” he added dryly.





	Injuries Sustained

** Injuries Sustained **

“Well, _that_ wasn’t much fun,” groused Sheppard as Rodney helped him sit up and lean against the cave wall. “Who knew the locals would be so unfriendly?”

Rodney ignored his complaining and proceeded to pull out his small first aid kit, patching up the cut on John’s forehead.

“It’s deep,” he said through a clenched jaw. John flinched as the scientist’s finger pressed against the wound just a little too hard.

“Hey, careful!”

Rodney rolled his eyes.

“Oh, shut up, you big baby, it’s not _that_ deep. You just need a couple of stitches. Give me a minute, and I’ll have you patched up, okay?” As Rodney dug through the supplies, John gave him a wary look, and the younger man saw it, rolled his eyes a second time, and said, “I know how to do stitches, Sheppard. Jennifer forced me to take basic training for these types of things, just in case anything like this happened while off-world. Looks like it’s gonna come in handy; what a surprise,” he added dryly.

John still gave him the side-eye as he pulled out the needle and numbing agent.

“Are you _sure_ you know what you’re doing?”

“No, I’m just going to stick a needle in you and hope for the best,” he quipped. “Yes, I know what I’m doing! Now. Let me do what I need to in order to keep you from bleeding out, alright?”

John slowly nodded and leaned back against the cave wall, hoping that Rodney really knew what he was doing. Not that he didn’t trust him, he did…but, also, he didn’t. He trusted him when it came to his own science, but when it came to other sciences, the man tended to look down on them and not give them as much credit, so usually disregarded them as unimportant.

…but the older man didn’t really have a choice.

He felt Rodney dab a numbing agent around the wound after swabbing it in alcohol, and then grimaced as he felt the firm pressure of something being pushed through the skin on his forehead. It didn’t hurt at all, but it felt weird as hell, that was for sure.

“Uh, Rodney…”

“Hush. I’m working.”

John went quiet. He’d seen Rodney in the past when he was interrupted while working, and he knew that the man was prone to mistakes when taken out of the flow of his work, so he let him be. Years of practice actually made it much easier for him than it should have been.

A few long, silent minutes later, Rodney let out an “Aha!”, and John knew he was done.

Sitting up a bit, he asked, “You done? Because my butt’s about totally asleep, here, and I’d like to get up and move around, maybe check the perimeter--”

Rodney cut him off, as well as the end of the stitch.

“Not happening, Sheppard. One thing I know for certain is that head wounds are not to be treated lightly. You need to stay here, sit still, and not worry about what’s going to happen next. Let _me_ be the one to worry about that, hmmm?” He put his kit back together and headed towards the entrance. He glanced outside and said, “Looks like the sun’s dropping, anyway, so we’re probably stuck here for the night.” He looked a bit wary, but solid in a way that John had never seen him before. “Doesn’t feel all that cold, so we shouldn’t need a fire. We’ll wait for the next SG team to find us.”

John gave him a look.

“Ok, since when did you grow a backbone?” he asked, giving Rodney a once over.

Rodney rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, ha ha, very funny,” he jabbed back at him, “But I have been known to not be a _total_ coward. We eluded them pretty well, I think, thanks to you, so we really don’t have anything to be worrying about. It’s a relatively safe situation, considering other situations that we’ve been in in the past. If I didn’t have anything else for comparison, I am certain that I would be completely panicking at this point.”

John waited a beat, and then nodded, and then repeated with an arched eyebrow, “The next SG team? And what makes you think there’s another team coming through that gate anytime soon?”

“Well, they’ll soon notice that we’re missing and send a search party, won’t they?”

John shrugged.

“Dunno. They might not realize we’re missing for a while.” He glanced outside. “I covered our tracks pretty good, so the locals shouldn’t find us, but that also means that it’ll be hard for them to find us, too,” he mused out loud, and tried not to grin at seeing Rodney’s eyes go wide.

“Oh…so…we might be here a while…”

John nodded.

“Yeah, we just might. You okay with that, mister backbone?”

The scientist rolled his eyes again and sat down next to him, wincing as he did, and replied, “If we’re going to be here a while could you refrain from making fun of me? My overconfidence only lasts for so long, and now it’s sort of…” He glanced back outside again. “…deflating.”

The older man conceded and gave a faint nod, and looked over at his friend…and that was when he saw the wound. On the left side of Rodney’s BDUs, was a bloody stain that was steadily getting larger as he continued to stare at it. My god. Rodney must have been shot, and he hadn’t said a thing.

“Rodney!”

“What?”

“You were shot?! Geez, why didn’t you say anything!” John hissed at him, as he sat up a bit straighter and reached over to grab a gauze pad from the kit that the doctor had brought with him, trying to ignore the way that his vision swam as he did so. Ugh. Moving around probably wasn’t the best idea. He most likely had a concussion, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Rodney had been shot. He shoved aside Rodney’s coat, lifted up his shirt, and swallowed at seeing the ugly wound in his side.

“What?” asked a confused McKay. “I was shot? What are you talking about?” He looked down at his side. “I was shot?!”

John glared up at him and pressed the gauze to the wound and snapped, “Yeah, you were _shot_. How do you not notice something like that?”

The younger man just stared at him, and then finally replied after gaping like a fish for a long moment, “I felt a pinch and some pain, earlier, but I thought that I’d just gotten a stitch in my side, or something. If I’d known that I’d been shot, I wouldn’t have patched _you_ up first!”

John rolled his eyes and reached for the alcohol swabs and the tweezers. There wasn’t any more local numbing. Dammit. He looked back at Rodney’s injury. There wasn’t an exit wound, so the bullet was still in there and _he_ was going to have to be the one to pull it out. He had the unfortunate experience of having done it a couple of times before, in Afghanistan.

He glanced around the cave floor, looking for anything that he could give to Rodney to bite down on while he operated on him with no painkiller. Nothing. Crap. He _really_ wasn’t going to like this.

“Rodney, I’m gonna need you to _not_ scream, okay? We don’t wanna attract any attention from the natives…”

He looked at him, confused, one hand holding his shirt up.

“Scream? Why would I…” And then he saw what was in John’s hands. “Please tell me we have still have some numbing…” John shook his head at the unfinished question, and Rodney glared at him. “Oh…oh no. No! You are _not_ performing surgery on me in a cave!”

John ground his back teeth and forced out, “The bullet is still in you, Rodney, and, in case you weren’t aware, bullets aren’t supposed to be inside bodies!”

“Well, technically, since they’re designed to kill--”

“Rodney!”

“Fine! Fine, just…do it quick,” he asked, looking away as John pulled away the gauze from the wound and then dabbed it with alcohol swabs. The scientist hissed at the contact, but made no other sound, which boded well for what John was about to do. Despite most likely having a concussion, he knew he could do this.

However, just as he was about to start, Rodney’s head swung back around to look him nervously in the eye, his free hand grabbed onto John’s wrist, and he tentatively asked, “Uh, you have…uh, _done_ this before, right?”

“Yes. I have.”

“Oh, okay. Good.”

“Now, stay still,” he said firmly as he moved closer with the tweezers. Rodney’s eyes slid tightly shut and he turned his head away as John carefully dug them into the wound. As they moved deeper, he could see the younger man was straining with all his might to not cry out, and he had to admit that he was impressed. He’d taken out bullets under similar circumstances before, where the slightest sound could betray their position, and the air force men he’d dealt with hadn’t been anywhere near as strong as Rodney was showing.

As soon as he felt the tweezers hit something solid, he had to twist them slightly to grab a solid hold on the bullet, and Rodney’s entire body tensed, and John could see the tendons in his neck straining with the effort to not cry out, his shoulders tensed and his grip solid on John's wrist.

He ignored it.

As quickly and carefully as he could, he removed the bullet, and then immediately came back with one last alcohol swab and the last of the stitches that were in the kit. This part was going to be the worst of it. He stitched him up as quickly as possible, knowing that they had to stop the bleeding, and then threw a bandage over top of it, taping it firmly down.

John pulled back and saw Rodney finally turn his head back towards him, faint streaks of tears on his face.

“Holy hell, that hurt,” he managed to gasp out.

John grimly nodded.

“Yeah. But you did great, McKay. I know soldiers who are total babies when it comes to bullet holes and stitches. You’re ten times better than they were.”

Rodney snorted.

“Yeah, right. Sure, I was…”

John grabbed his shoulder and looked him firmly in the eye and said, “I’m not kidding Rodney. You were great.”

Looking surprised at the sincerity in John’s tone, he simply swallowed and nodded, and so did John. He sat back against the cave wall and let out a long sigh of relief. They sat there in silence for a long time before either of them said anything. It was, of course, Rodney who broke the silence.

“John…when do you think they’ll find us?”

“Well,” he drawled, “Considering I activated my tracking beacon about ten minutes ago, about…three hours? Tops?”

At this, Rodney turned and glared at him.

“You _what_? You mean…you...you…you had me worrying that we were going to be stuck here for a couple of _days_ when it was only going to be for a few hours?!” John nodded. “How could you…you…?”

“Could I what? Would it _honestly_ have made a difference? You would have worried, anyway,” he quipped back, giving him a look. “It’s not like it’s such a big deal. Besides, I’m not too keen on being stuck here for _any_ length of time. A few hours could be enough for a local search party to find us, too.”

Rodney looked upset at that thought, so John quickly reassured him with, “But I doubt it, so, let’s just enjoy what little down time we have, alright?”

“Downtime? _Downtime_? Only _you_ , of all people, would call a concussion and emergency field surgery _down_ time!”

“Eh, you take what you can get,” he muttered, breaking out a granola bar from his pack. “Want one?”

Rodney nodded.

“Yeah, sure.”

And they waited.

Just as John had said, only two hours later they heard people outside the cave, and then saw a familiar uniform coming through the bush. It was Atlantis. They were saved. The instant they got onto the puddle jumper, however, they insisted on Rodney laying down, all of them worried over his bullet wound.

As soon as he was back in the infirmary, however, Dr. Keller looked him over, and then looked back up at John as she inspected the stitching around the scientist’s injury.

She pressed and prodded, while Rodney winced a few times, and then said to the Lieutenant Colonel, “You did this?”

John nodded.

“Yeah…something wrong?”

“No,” she replied, shaking her head. “In fact, you just might have done a better job than I could have,” Jennifer reluctantly admitted. She looked at the stitches a second time and added, “Whoever taught you, taught you well. You have a nice, clean tie-off, and it shouldn’t even scar too badly. Very nicely done, John.”

John grinned widely at that, and then looked down at Rodney and said, smugly, “You hear that, McKay? I did a better job than _she_ could have. Whaddaya have to say about that?”

Rodney sat up and glared at him, saying nothing.

“By the way,” she asked, changing the bandaging over the wound, “Where did you learn?”

John smirked and proudly stated, “My grandad’s sheep farm. Whenever one of ‘em got injured, he would stitch them up himself instead of wasting the money dragging the vet down there. He showed me how. Always said I was a natural.”

“You practiced on _sheep?_ ” yelped Rodney, while Jennifer scolded him and forced him to stay still. “I feel so…violated!”

“Oh, come off it, McKay,” John drawled, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “You’re alive and well. Well, the second part could be up for debate, but since that’s not really the point, let me just say that if not for my skills, you just might not have made it back…”

The younger man scoffed.

“Oh, c’mon. It wasn’t _that_ bad, it was just--”

“Actually,” Dr. Keller interrupted, “If it hadn’t been for John, I’m pretty sure you would have bled out before we could have saved you. You should thank him for saving your life.”

Looking more than a bit put out by the fact, Rodney avoided looking his friend in the eye, while she continued to redress the wrappings. She then looked over at John and said, “You, get on the bed over there. I wanna take a closer look at that head wound.”

“I’m fine, doc, it’s just a--”

“Now.”

Letting out a groan of frustration, he sat on the edge of the bed opposite Rodney’s and let her press her inquisitive fingers on his forehead, while he tried not to show any outward discomfort in front of his friend. It was just a scratch. Well, a scratch with stitches, but it wasn’t really _that_ bad. His concussion had been mild, and he would recover after a day or two, he was certain.

After a moment, she said, “Huh.”

“What?”

Jennifer took a closer look, running a finger along the stitching, and then said, “Rodney did a good job. Looks like he was paying attention in my workshop.” She pressed her pointer finger in and John winced. “You’re lucky, too, Sheppard. If he hadn’t been so quick, you probably would have passed out from rapid blood loss. Head wounds tend to bleed a lot, and passing out with a concussion from a head trauma _can_ result in a coma. Good thing he got to you when he did.”

She arched her eyebrow at him and pulled her gloves off and tossed them in the bin, as well as tossed over her shoulder as she walked away, “John, you are off missions, and gate travel of any kind for the next week. Rodney, you are off missions, gate travel, and lab work for two weeks.” They both immediately tried to protest, but she held her ground and turned around and put her hands on her hips and snapped, “Would you like me to make it more?”

They fell silent.

“Good. Now, I expect the two of you to get some rest, understood?”

They nodded, and she left.

Rodney slowly threw his legs over the edge of the bed, keeping a hand on his side, and John gave him a look and said, “So…I guess we’re stuck with reading, huh?”

Rodney groaned.

“Ugh, I get the whole no-missions or gate travel, but no lab? C’mon, what could happen to me in the lab?”

John gave him a look and answered his rhetorical question with, “Do you want a list of all the times you’ve nearly blown either Zelenka or yourself up just from being in the lab? Let’s see, should I list it alphabetically, or chronologically?”

“Very funny.”

“I thought so,” he replied with an unrepentant grin.

The younger man rolled his eyes and very carefully stood up, John already next to him, just in case he needed help. Rodney wavered for a second, and then stood steady, and looked over at his friend. After a few long seconds, he finally said, “So…uh…thanks. You know. For…saving my life, and all.”

John nodded.

“Yeah, no problem.” He patted him on the shoulder and started to walk away, and then heard Rodney let out an exasperated sigh. “You’ve got something else to say, McKay?”

“No, I believe _you_ do,” he jabbed back at him.

John rolled his head on his shoulders and turned back around, swinging his arms theatrically as he did so, and said dramatically, “Okay, fine! Thank you for saving my life! There. Happy?”

The scientist looked about to protest, but John gave him a silent glare, and instead he simply gave him a small smile and replied, “I’ll take what I can get.”

They grinned at each other, and then walked out of the infirmary, both of them silently agreeing to head for the mess hall, as they were both famished. It may have been nighttime on P3S-491, but it was early morning on Atlantis, and both of their stomachs growled at the smell of bacon and eggs. And coffee. But as they sat down, Rodney reaching for his cup, a hand shot out of nowhere and said, “Ah! No caffeine, Dr. McKay! Doctor’s orders.”

Jennifer.

“Dr. Keller,” drawled John. “Are you joining us?”

She shook her head.

“Nope. Just making my sure my patients are following proper procedure,” she said, reaching over and grabbing John’s coffee directly from his hand, ignoring his sound of adamant protest.

“Aw, c’mon! I mean, I get the fact that _he_ can’t have any caffeine,” John whined, pointing at Rodney, “But why me? What’s it gonna do to me?”

“You have a head injury, Lieutenant Colonel. Do the math. That’s what you’re good at, isn’t it?”

And with that, she turned around and walked away from them, her stride somehow smug and confident. Both of them were more than slightly upset by the turn of events, but Rodney was the first to cave in, with a, “Well, what can you do?” look, and then turned back to his food, digging into his eggs. John, however, took a bit longer, glaring at the table and the empty spot where his coffee had been. It was entirely unfair. She actually expected them to go without coffee?

“No coffee? Really?”

Rodney shrugged and said with his mouth still full, “Eh, i’s not tha big o’ a deal.”

“Not that big of a deal?” fumed John. “Coffee is the only thing that keeps me from strangling you most days, McKay!”

The scientist swallowed.

“Oh.”

They sat there for a long time, eating their breakfast in silence, thinking about their situation…and then, out of nowhere, John said, “Hey, you want a souvenir?”

Rodney looked up to see him pull out a small object from the inside pocket of his coat. Rodney looked at it in surprise: there, nestled between his thumb and first finger, was the bullet that John had pulled from his side.

“I, uh, held onto it,” explained John, handing it over to him. “I thought you might, you know, wanna keep it as a memento, or something. Like, something that you could show off to the ladies to prove that you’d been in battle, in case they didn’t believe that your scar was from a bullet…or something like that,” he clumsily finished, not quite looking his friend in the eye, absently stabbing at his eggs with his fork.

Rodney swallowed his bite of bacon and carefully turned the tiny piece of metal over in his hands. It was barely larger than a peanut. He looked at it for a long time, his food forgotten, and then looked back up at John, brown locking onto hazel, and then hesitantly said, “Uh…thanks,” and tucked it into his coat pocket.

John nodded.

“Yeah, anytime.”

As soon as they finished breakfast (which was oddly silent), they both started off in their usual directions; John towards the gate room, and Rodney to the lab…and then stopped.

“Right.” Rodney was the first to break the silence. “No lab work.”

“Or gating,” added John, turning back to him, looking awkward and slightly uncomfortable. They stared at each other for a long time, and then… “Wanna go fishing?”

Rodney rolled his eyes.

“Seriously? _That’s_ what you wanna do with your time off? Go and wade knee deep in some river, putting worms and god-knows-what-else on a hook, where you’ll most likely just end up spending the entire day getting wet and tired with no reward to show for it? It’s not exactly my idea of a good time, Sheppard.”

John scowled.

“Then what would _you_ suggest?”

The younger man thought about it for a moment, and then smiled and said, “How about some chess?”

John grinned.

“You know I’m gonna beat you, again, right?” he jabbed at him, as they started walking down the hallway to Rodney’s quarters, and Rodney gave him a small smirk.

“Oh, I don’t know about that, Sheppard,” he snipped. “I’ve been studying up, recently, and I think I can give you a run for your money.”

John just rolled his eyes, but smiled anyway as they finally approached Rodney’s room and stepped inside. The board was already set up, of course, and as they sat down, John thought back on what had happened on P3S-491. They had saved each other’s lives. That wasn’t how it usually happened. Most of the time, it was just close calls and near misses.

This time, it had been different. They’d saved each other’s lives.

As Rodney opened with what he called the “Caro-Kann Defense”, John couldn’t help but smile, yet again. Yeah, that’s sort of what their relationship was all about. They annoyed the hell out of each other, fought like crazy…but they saved each other. That was just what they did, and how they fit together.

And he was fine with that.

 

 


End file.
